About Me

I am a Christian woman trying to care for my husband, our six children, and our home in the best way that I know how. Follow along as I discover new and better ways to care for the blessings I've been given.

Monday, October 18, 2010

Training Our Bodies To Accept Poison

Recently I was pleased to see the latest copy of Wise Traditions appear in our mailbox. Wise Traditions is the quarterly periodical that is distributed by The Weston A. Price Foundation. At the front of the publication are several letters sent in by readers. One of the letters was from a lady in Canada. In her letter she explained that in the last three years her family has switched over to a diet consisting of whole, unprocessed foods. Prior to making this dietary change, the family ate processed foods on a daily basis with no ill effects. However, since improving their diet three years ago, her family can no longer consume processed foods without having adverse reactions such as nausea, vomiting, flu-like illnesses, and behavioral issues. The letter's author then goes on to explain why she believes that her family is now having these reactions.

This letter got my brain churning and I've been hashing out a post for several days now. Shawn and I have noticed that we now have reactions to processed foods similiar to the author of the letter. We've often wondered why this occurs now when it did not when we were eating the Standard American Diet, so it was interesting to read the letter in Wise Traditions and see her ideas.

Here's our belief as to why we're now sensitive to processed foods:

We believe that processed foods are loaded full of poisons that God never intended for us to consume. We believe that Americans have done a superb job of training their bodies to accept these poisons, even to the point that our bodies now crave the substances that ultimately harm them. Just as an alcoholic can train their body to accept poisonous levels of alcohol, the average American has trained their body to accept poisonous levels of food additives and chemicals. A couple of years ago when our diet was almost 100% processed food, our bodies were so used to accepting poisons on a daily basis that they no longer sent out warnings that we were doing something harmful. Now that we've changed our eating habits and allowed our bodies to heal, they are now capable of sending out distress calls when we put a poison into them. For us, those distress calls include nausea, eczema, fatigue, weakness, and dehydration. I think that when we consume foods that God put on Earth for us to consume, then our body works the way He designed it. Likewise, when we misuse God's creation, our bodies cease to work in the way He intended.

Some may say, "Well, when you break everything down, EVERYTHING is created from something that God created, so how can it be bad?" I agree that everything in existence ultimately came from something God created. However, just because God allows something to exist doesn't mean that He approves of it. Man was able to discover a process to murder unborn children. Everything involved in that process is derived from something that God created. I would argue that abortion is a misuse of God's creation. Likewise, I would argue that the chemicals put in processed food are perversions of God's creation. The easiest example is artificial food coloring. Did you know that artificial food dyes are made from petroleum? Yes, petroleum that God placed deep within the earth. The same stuff that was floating all over the ocean in the Gulf Oil Spill. Would you allow your child to jump into the Gulf of Mexico and swallow up some of that crude oil or drink a spoonful of gasoline? Of course not! Why is it ok for us to give our children petroleum in processed food, but it's not ok to give them a spoonful of gasoline? I cannot come up with a reason as to why gasoline is harmful to drink, but petroleum-based food additives are perfectly safe.

Some others may be saying, "But there have been studies that have shown that these products are safe to use in food, so they must be safe." I would say that just because "they" say that something is safe doesn't mean that it is. Look back at all the pregnant women that took thalidomide to help alleviate their morning sickness. We now know that thalidomide caused those women's babies to be born with serious physical birth defects. That drug was once deemed safe for use and we were shown that that position was wrong, wrong, wrong. Man has been proven wrong time and time again. I believe that God has always been right and will always be right. I am not willing to let my children consume petroleum-based food colorings and thereby allow them to be guinea pigs in the next thalidomide science experiment. We will stick to eating God's food because I trust that God knew what He was doing when He created all.

I want to close by saying that, if any of this makes sense to you and you desire to rid your body of the poisons that man tells you are safe...please don't be discouraged if it takes you a while to achieve it. In today's society, having the desire to make that change is a big deal in and of itself. Baby steps have helped our family achieve so much and I highly recommend the effectiveness of taking those baby steps. It's unfortunate that training our bodies to live without daily poisons is such a difficult process, however I believe that it will be worth it in the end. Just take the baby steps to get there and see how much better you feel once you've rid your body of the man-made poisons that are in it.

4 comments:

Loved the post Janice! We are definately getting close to be poison free. but there are those days, like on Saturday, when we all went out upland bird hunting, it was 7:00 when we all got home, so it was a Papa Murphy's pizza for us. Didn't have time to even think about putting dinner in the crockpot, had football all morning. We don't do that very often, maybe once of month. But it is nice to take a break once in a while. We are sooo on board with the Weston A. Price foundation reccomendations.

Poison of the body is no different than poison of the mind, the process evolves through incrementalism. If grandma took 40 pills when she was 30, she would have fallen over dead on an overdose. Her body has been conditioned to take all those meds. If you jumped into a time machine and handed someone in 1710 a twinkie, they would have vomited. If you attempted to impose the level of taxation we have today on citizens of the 19th century, there would have been an armed revolt. Walk down the street in 1890 wearing the clothing we currently allow our teenage daughters to wear, you would have been arrested for public indecency.The road to hell is not made with a single leap, but a series of small steps.